The Law and the Lady, by Wilkie Collins

Part ii. Paradise Regained.

Chapter xv.

The Story of the Trial. The Preliminaries.

Let me confess another weakness, on my part, before I begin the Story of the Trial. I cannot prevail
upon myself to copy, for the second time, the horrible title-page which holds up to public ignominy my husband’s name.
I have copied it once in my tenth chapter. Let once be enough.

Turning to the second page of the Trial, I found a Note, assuring the reader of the absolute correctness of the
Report of the Proceedings. The compiler described himself as having enjoyed certain special privileges. Thus, the
presiding Judge had himself revised his charge to the jury. And, again, the chief lawyers for the prosecution and the
defense, following the Judge’s example, had revised their speeches for and against the prisoner. Lastly, particular
care had been taken to secure a literally correct report of the evidence given by the various witnesses. It was some
relief to me to discover this Note, and to be satisfied at the outset that the Story of the Trial was, in every
particular, fully and truly given.

The next page interested me more nearly still. It enumerated the actors in the Judicial Drama — the men who held in
their hands my husband’s honor and my husband’s life. Here is the List:

The Indictment against the prisoner then followed. I shall not copy the uncouth language, full of needless
repetitions (and, if I know anything of the subject, not guiltless of bad grammar as well), in which my innocent
husband was solemnly and falsely accused of poisoning his first wife. The less there is of that false and hateful
Indictment on this page, the better and truer the page will look, to my eyes.

To be brief, then, Eustace Macallan was “indicted and accused, at the instance of David Mintlaw, Esquire, Her
Majesty’s Advocate, for Her Majesty’s interest,” of the Murder of his Wife by poison, at his residence called Gleninch,
in the county of Mid–Lothian. The poison was alleged to have been wickedly and feloniously given by the prisoner to his
wife Sara, on two occasions, in the form of arsenic, administered in tea, medicine, “or other article or articles of
food or drink, to the prosecutor unknown.” It was further declared that the prisoner’s wife had died of the poison thus
administered b y her husband, on one or other, or both, of the stated occasions; and that she was thus murdered by her
husband. The next paragraph asserted that the said Eustace Macallan, taken before John Daviot, Esquire, advocate,
Sheriff–Substitute of Mid–Lothian, did in his presence at Edinburgh (on a given date, viz., the 29th of October),
subscribe a Declaration stating his innocence of the alleged crime: this Declaration being reserved in the Indictment —
together with certain documents, papers and articles, enumerated in an Inventory — to be used in evidence against the
prisoner. The Indictment concluded by declaring that, in the event of the offense charged against the prisoner being
found proven by the Verdict, he, the said Eustace Macallan, “ought to be punished with the pains of the law, to deter
others from committing like crimes in all time coming.”

So much for the Indictment! I have done with it — and I am rejoiced to be done with it.

An Inventory of papers, documents, and articles followed at great length on the next three pages. This, in its turn,
was succeeded by the list of the witnesses, and by the names of the jurors (fifteen in number) balloted for to try the
case. And then, at last, the Report of the Trial began. It resolved itself, to my mind, into three great Questions. As
it appeared to me at the time, so let me present it here.